The difference is downforce

Different setups mean a lot even as cars run similar times.

Here we look at two different philosophies on car setup that worked exactly as planned for one team and left the other wishing it had followed its usual form.

By the numbers, Team Penske's Helio Castroneves trounced Schmidt Hamilton Motorsports' Simon Pagenaud during time trials at Long Beach last weekend, but understanding how the two drivers started so far apart takes some explaining for those who are new to the sport.

With three rounds of knockout qualifying, the IZOD IndyCar Series starts off with Round 1 by splitting the field in half for two separate sessions. The fastest six cars from each group transfer into Round 2, the Firestone Fast 12.The cars that fail to make it into the Fast 12 are done for the day and make up positions 13 through however many cars are entered (27 at Long Beach). Once the Fast 12 session gets underway, the six fastest transfer to the Fast 6, and those who set the times from seventh to 12th are knocked out and locked into their respective positions for the race. The Fast 6 sets the order for where those six remaining drivers start, with the fastest earning the pole.

For Pagenaud and his Honda-powered No. 77 entry, making it out of Round 1 was too tall an order. He'd actually set a faster lap than Castroneves, who went in the other group, but that didn't matter.

Pagenaud's 1:07.997 around the 1.9-mile, 11-turn street course was only ninth-fastest in his group, so he didn't transfer to the Fast 12. Castroneves, by comparison, made it through Round 1 and 2 in his Chevy-powered No. 3, promoting him to the Fast 6 where he set the sixth-fastest lap at a 1:07.969.

His French competitor would start the race buried 11 spots behind him, but what led to Pagenaud missing the Fast 12 had nothing to do with a lack of talent or effort, according to his engineer Ben Bretzman.

"On Friday, we couldn't get a set of brakes to work, so we wrote the day off," Bretzman said. "So on Saturday we had to pick the right direction to go on setup, and we ended up P1 in the morning session (just prior to qualifying). Those ambient conditions were really cool. The big question after that, and in general today, is which philosophy to take for qualifying.

"It's all about getting off the corners, and we've changed our philosophy in that direction this year. You hear a lot of people talking about burning the rear tires off this car, but we've never understood that because Simon never does that. He takes great care of his rear tires, so as a result, we can be more aggressive with our setup. We never think about it. It's our last concern.

"What we think about is what kind of on-power rotation can we get to free the car up in qualifying. Well, that works just about everywhere but Long Beach. Long Beach has a massively long straightaway, so you have to respect the straightaway, but there's nowhere in the IndyCar Series, not even at Baltimore, where you run the tall curbs like you do at Long Beach. So you have to be able to shortcut the curbs and make the track as short as you can. But you also need to respect the straightline speed.

"We looked over the trap speeds from Practice 3, and not only were we the fastest car in the session, we were the fastest car on the straight. We started out the weekend fairly trimmed out (aerodynamically) and kept trimming out even further. That's where we screwed up."

As Bretzman explains, going for dragster-like speed on the straights was their undoing and a rather uncharacteristic move for the veteran sports car and open-wheel engineer.

"That's the big rule we broke from sports cars," he said. "It was a bad mistake because you always qualify somewhat maxed on downforce, and we got a little greedy coming out of Practice 3. We got caught with less downforce than we wanted to have."

Pagenaud's qualifying attempt was an exercise in maximum effort. Curbs are hurdled with abandon. The steering wheel is rarely at peace. Pagenaud doesn't wait for the car to fully rotate before romping on the throttle. He anticipates the oversteer and starts correcting the back of the car before it becomes a problem, but he loses a few thousandths here and there while working to overcome the No. 77's handling deficiencies.

To quantify how hard Pagenaud was working, you only need to watch Castroneves' solo lap.
Helio might not be able to hit the same top speed as the No. 77, but with the extra assistance from his car's aerodynamics,
Castroneves is relaxed and smooth as glass in most corners. Pagenaud, on the other hand, lights up his tires and slews sideways in places where Castroneves is on rails.

Watch the video a few times—for the overlay of Castroneves and Pagenaud, I put Helio's audio on the left on Simon's on the right—and see what you can pick out in terms of handling and driving differences between the two aces.

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